ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the political dimension of the Chinese media’s response to this crisis. It begins by looking at the history of the Chinese press and the tradition of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in managing media to aide its “thought work” (sixiang gongzuo), and examines how economic reforms in the 1980s through 2000s have changed the power dynamic of media, the market, and the state. It reveals how historically the Chinese party-state has been shaping a politically dependent role for the media and intervening in the development of the media. It then explores and discusses how a series of government policies centered on the theme of “media convergence” (meiti ronghe) were introduced to intervene in the digital transformation of the media, and the ways in which these political interventions have conditioned the possible responses of the newspaper organizations to the crisis.
